Doctor Who_ Time Zero Part 23

Then both the smiles froze on their faces. Their hands touched, but kept moving, each grasping air, each finding the other insubstantial.

'Like a ghost,' Anji breathed.

Slowly, almost timidly, George stepped forward. He reached out his arm, and pushed it through the Doctor's chest. He blinked the ice out of his eyes, and walked right through the Doctor.

'Are you ghosts?' he asked, in surprise.

'No,' the Doctor said slowly. 'But I think you are.' He pointed back at the wall of ice. 'Look there.'

'Good grief!'

Anji could see it too a shadow, an impression, a faint image of George was still embedded in the ice. Like a faded photograph, or washed*out watercolour.

'What is it?' she asked.

'I'm not sure,' the Doctor said. 'But I have some rather unpleasant ideas.' He tapped his thumbnail against his teeth as he considered. 'I need the TARDIS to make a proper a.s.sessment,' he went on. 'I wonder if I can persuade Hartford to bring it here.'

Anji laughed. 'Not likely. Where is it, anyway?'

'It's on the cargo plane that Curtis brought us in.' The Doctor turned to George and made to thump him amicably on the shoulder. But his fist pa.s.sed through and appeared the other side of the astonished man. 'You are a man out of time, George Williamson,' the Doctor proclaimed.

George smiled at him. 'Nothing new there, Doctor.' Then his smile faded. 'Doctor,' he said earnestly, 'I came here with Fitz.'

'I know.'

'He's well, he's dead. I'm sorry.'

The Doctor nodded. 'I know,' he said again.

Anji knew too. She had known for over a year. But to hear it actually said still hammered into her emotions. 'No,' she heard herself saying. 'You can't possibly be sure of that.'

'Anji,' the Doctor said gently.

'How can you know?' she shouted at him. Her voice echoed round the frozen cave, ringing off the icicles.

'I saw him die,' George said quietly. 'It's the last thing I remember.'

'And I've read his journal,' the Doctor said, his voice also controlled and calm. 'I mean the real real journal.' He sighed, and she could see the tears freezing in his glistening eyes. 'I bought it in an antiquarian bookshop on the Euston Road in 1938.' journal.' He sighed, and she could see the tears freezing in his glistening eyes. 'I bought it in an antiquarian bookshop on the Euston Road in 1938.'

13: Decision

A man stands. Frozen in time. The chill breeze from the open door ripples the cracked pages of the book he holds.

The Doctor hesitates. Should he buy the book anyway? A Curiosity? A coincidence? Or a distraction. He has more than enough to do.

With a sudden dust*clouding movement that makes the old woman blink and s.h.i.+ver, he snaps the book shut. He refolds his piece of paper, a quick well*practised routine.

And he reaches out to replace the book on the shelf.

The book slides easily back into its dusty place. But the Doctor hesitates, the book half*in and half*out. A decision, a turning point. If he leaves it now, he will never know for sure. And what does he have to lose?

He pulls the book out again, and turns to smile at the old woman counting the money.

12: Realisation

The only way out of the ice cavern was back up the sloping pa.s.sageway they had arrived through. It was gla.s.sy with ice, impossible to climb. And the sound of the creatures outside, calling to each other, perhaps readying themselves for another attack, was hardly an incentive to try.

'An invidious choice,' George had remarked. 'We can freeze or starve to death in here, or get eaten alive outside.'

Fitz sat cross*legged, numb from the waist down, staring at the ice sculpture. There was no doubt about it the form that jutted from the clear wall was the TARDIS. It was carved, gouged from the ice. The exterior was slightly misshapen and lumpy, icicles dripped down from the ledges and the panels of the doors. The handle was a b.u.mp in the ice.

It was frosted and opaque in places. But in those areas where the ice was clear as gla.s.s, he could see the frozen flames inside. They illuminated it from within. He had once seen a large alabaster vase at some country house, on a visit with his mum, he guessed. There was a lamp inside the vase, so that it seemed to glow softly in its alcove. The effect here was similar. The ice*TARDIS was imbued with an inner life as if it were alive...

He pulled the journal from his pocket and smoothed out the loose pages that had torn away from the binding earlier. He spent some time slotting them back into their right places, annoyed that several were missing including the last page. Was this how his life would be seen he wondered? A half*written book with the final page missing? Perhaps someday someone would find the journal and his body: frozen in the ice like the creatures trapped in the other wall preserved in the moment of death; timeless. Or maybe they would only find the pages that had fluttered away from him on the tundra outside. Or nothing at all.

He was leafing through the book as he thought. His eyes scanned the scrawled pencil text, reading without consciously absorbing; seeing but not remarking.

'I expect they're waiting for dark. It won't be long.' George was landing looking up the pa.s.sageway. The howls and roars of the animals outside echoed faintly down it. He turned away. 'I should make some notes,' he said. 'Can I have some paper, and borrow your pencil?'

'Help yourself.' Fitz tore a page from the back of the book and handed it to him together with what was left of his pencil. 'I don't have a knife, I'm afraid.' Just a grenade, he thought as he felt the cold lump in his pocket. And that would hardly be the best thing to sharpen the pencil.

The journal lay in front of him, fallen open at one of the loose pages he had replaced. And as Fitz scanned the words, another piece fell into place and he felt an icy finger tracing its way down his spine. Tingling and pins and needles were inching through his legs.

It was his account of Galloway's death. It was his description of how he arrived at the tent, found George there already.

'Unfortunately, George could not give me an alibi as he had not looked to see that I was in my tent when he heard the cry. Like me, he ran straight towards the noise, not pausing to check who else was around'

And there it was. He stared at the words without seeing them.

George had not checked that Fitz was in his tent any more than Fitz had checked that George was still there. In fact, George had been at Galloway's death scene before Fitz had. He could only have been moments ahead of him, yet Fitz had not seen him, had not heard his hasty awakening or his scrabble to get from the tent and to his feet. He had found him with the body. Unable to vouch for Fitz.

Of course he was unable to vouch for Fitz George had no idea when Fitz had got up, if he had been in his tent at all. Because George had not been in his. George Williamson the one man Fitz knew had a motive for killing Galloway had been there already.

Not only that, but when Caversham disappeared, it was George who had run after him down the corridor; George who was the last the see him alive.

He turned slowly and looked at his friend. He was leaning back against a large chunk of ice, sketching the bizarre scene in the cavern wall. The edge of his tongue licked out of the corner of his mouth as he concentrated on the detail of the ancient animal embedded in the ice.

George Williamson palaeontologist, geologist, Fitz's friend. George Williamson the murderer. Seeming to sense Fitz's attention, he looked across, smiled.

But, with the sound of the creatures outside calling to each other, gathering themselves for a final a.s.sault, Fitz could not bring himself to smile back. And it seemed to him that George's expression froze and hardened like ice As if he realised what Fitz was thinking. What Fitz now knew.

11: Bargain

'Show me the fire,' the Doctor had said.

George had apparently understood what he meant immediately, and indicated an area in one of the ice walls. The Doctor was now sc.r.a.ping away the frost and polis.h.i.+ng the icy surface.

'Doctor.' She tried not to let her anger show too obviously. 'Do you mean to tell me that you've known about Fitz's death since 1938?'

He continued to wipe at the ice with a grubby hanky. George looked from Anji to the Doctor and shuffled his feet with embarra.s.sment.

'Well,' the Doctor said at last, pausing to breath heavily on the wall and give it another polish. 'Well, not exactly. I mean, I didn't know it was that Fitz our our Fitz.' Fitz.'

'How could you not know?'

He glanced at her, a hurt expression etched on to his face. 'I hadn't met Fitz then. Not as far as I knew anyway. And anyway, the journal didn't seem to be in his handwriting. I had this note, you see. From Fitz.'

'In different handwriting.'

'Yes.'

Anji was about to tell him how ridiculous this sounded when an Image rose unbidden in her memory. A small room. The Doctor sitting on a bed, holding a battered copy of The Age of Reason The Age of Reason. 'Is that his writing inside?' she heard him ask in her mind. And she recalled how he had seemed to sag at her reply.

'The note you had wasn't actually written by Fitz, was it?' she said huskily.

'No,' he said simply.

'But, if you bought the original journal...' This still didn't make sense.

'Exactly,' the Doctor said before her brain could catch up with it all. 'Look in here.'

Anji stared into the polished ice, at the tiny flames within. They did not seem to be moving at all. 'What is it?' she asked. 'It can't really be fire, not trapped in the ice like that. Can it?'

'Frozen in time,' the Doctor murmured.

George was peering over Anji's shoulder. 'They look smaller' he said. 'Much smaller.'

'The fire's going out?' she suggested.

'The ice hasn't melted,' the Doctor said thoughtfully. 'This ice slow light, that is the point after all. That is what Curtis needs for Naryshkin's black hole experiments.'

'But why?' Anji asked. Even to her it sounded whiny and pathetic.

'And more to the point,' the Doctor asked them, 'given the ice didn't melt, and given the fire is dying, where did the energy go?'

If Thorpe had ever seen Hartford so angry, he could not remember it. Together they strode through the corridors of the Inst.i.tute. Thorp said as little as possible and let Hartford rant.

To begin with they had returned to the Great Hall to find the Doctor and the Kapoor woman both gone. Wences, on guard outside the Hall insisted they had not pa.s.sed him.

Then Hartford found that both Harry Harries and Manda Simpson were missing from their posts. Hartford spent a full minute standing outside the main entrance in the cold, where Simpson was supposed to be on duty. He spoke loudly and without pausing for breath for the entire minute. Every word an expletive.

Thorpe knew better than to interrupt. He spent the time looking round for some clue as to where she had gone. She was a good soldier, Manda she wouldn't desert her post. There was nothing. Or rather, nothing that could explain it.

'What is that?'

It took Thorpe a moment to realise Hartford had returned to normal speech. He was looking down at the same thing as Thorpe a dull black lump jutting up from the covering of snow.

It was a pebble, or a stone. Smooth, but dull. Black. It was about the size of a golf ball. Thorpe tried to pick it up, but his fingers skidded off the surface, unable to get a grip.

'Forget it,' Hartford snapped. 'Get Joe to stand guard here.' He turned and marched back inside.

'Where now?' Thorpe asked as they made their way back through the corridors.

'I'm reporting in,' Hartford said. 'I need to ask ' He broke off and stopped so abruptly that Thorpe almost walked into him. Hartford was staring down a side corridor a corridor that led past the room the Grand d.u.c.h.ess was in and down towards the Cold Room. 'Who the h.e.l.l is that?'

There was a woman in the corridor. Thorpe turned quickly enough to see her caught for a split*second like a rabbit in headlights. She stared back at him with catlike eyes. Her blonde hair swung over her shoulders as she turned. And ran.

Hartford was after her in a moment, gun out ready. Thorpe followed. But when they reached the next corner, she was gone.

'Must be in the d.u.c.h.ess's room,' Thorpe said.

Hartford nodded. He threw the door open and they stepped inside. 'You might at least have the courtesy to knock.' The d.u.c.h.ess was sitting at the desk, pinning up her white hair. She did not bother to turn towards them. She was wearing a long, silk dressing gown.

'Someone came in here. Just now,' Thorpe said. But looking round he could tell there was nowhere anyone could hide.

'Only you,' the d.u.c.h.ess told him. The mirror was angled so that he could not see her expression, but Thorpe could hear the annoyance in her voice.

'Come on,' Hartford said, 'she must have ducked into another room.'

Only when they had both left did the Grand d.u.c.h.ess turn and look at the closed door.

There was no sign of Curtis in his room. Miriam Dewes crept over to the desk her heart thumping so strongly she was sure she could hear it. There was a depression in the bed where he had been lying where he had been when she sneaked in earlier and took the journal.

The bed looked odd, she thought as she replaced the leather*bound notebook on the desk. He would have missed it, but that could not be helped. There might have been something in it that her employers would be interested in. As it was, it seemed to be completely useless. Well, almost completely.

As she turned to go she realised what was strange about the bed. It was at an angle. Curious, she bent and looked underneath. One of the legs was buckled and broken.